Islam & Sciece
Islam and Science
The debate over Islam and science covers a wide range of issues and extends from political leaders and experts to the public at large. Revealing the ever-present tensions between theory and practice, this debate takes place at two levels: practical and intellectual. At the practical level, the challenge is keeping up with the technologicalcivilization of our age and bridging the gap between the advanced societies of the West and Muslim countries. From Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, to the Islamic Republic of Iran and poor and rich Arab countries, empowering nations through science and technology is a top priority for all governments in the Muslim world, even though not all succeed in this goal. But it is not only governments and bureaucrats who think this way; the public at large is also fascinated by the power and magic of science and technology, which has penetrated all aspects of our lives. By will or by necessity, the vast majority of Muslims use science andtechnology in ways indistinguishable from the rest of the world.
While the practical application of science shadows everything else, the intellectual claims surrounding it raise serious questions. As a systematic way of studying nature, science operates within a framework of philosophical assumptions that overlap with theology and philosophy. Religious, cosmological, and metaphysical ideas provide a context of justification for the scientific study of the order of nature. These ideas and presuppositions may not always be explicitly articulated, but they underlie the conceptual foundations of all scientific traditions from the classical to the modern period. Contrary to the claims of positivists and scientific purists, scientific inquiry is shaped by socio-historical circumstances and preferences. Long before the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 and the postmodernist critiques of science that followed it, a
The debate over Islam and science covers a wide range of issues and extends from political leaders and experts to the public at large. Revealing the ever-present tensions between theory and practice, this debate takes place at two levels: practical and intellectual. At the practical level, the challenge is keeping up with the technologicalcivilization of our age and bridging the gap between the advanced societies of the West and Muslim countries. From Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, to the Islamic Republic of Iran and poor and rich Arab countries, empowering nations through science and technology is a top priority for all governments in the Muslim world, even though not all succeed in this goal. But it is not only governments and bureaucrats who think this way; the public at large is also fascinated by the power and magic of science and technology, which has penetrated all aspects of our lives. By will or by necessity, the vast majority of Muslims use science andtechnology in ways indistinguishable from the rest of the world.
While the practical application of science shadows everything else, the intellectual claims surrounding it raise serious questions. As a systematic way of studying nature, science operates within a framework of philosophical assumptions that overlap with theology and philosophy. Religious, cosmological, and metaphysical ideas provide a context of justification for the scientific study of the order of nature. These ideas and presuppositions may not always be explicitly articulated, but they underlie the conceptual foundations of all scientific traditions from the classical to the modern period. Contrary to the claims of positivists and scientific purists, scientific inquiry is shaped by socio-historical circumstances and preferences. Long before the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 and the postmodernist critiques of science that followed it, a